ATLANTA — With every missed layup, three snaps and fumbled passes out of bounds, you can imagine Danny Hurley somewhere in Connecticut with steam coming out of his nostrils while watching Tuesday’s game here between No. 1 Kansas and Michigan State while doing a full Seinfeld-meets-George-Carlin routine.

“The Champions Classic? What (expletive) do you call this a classic? And last time I checked, aren’t we the (expletive) champions?“

To be perfectly clear, Hurley did not say that. As far as we know, he wasn’t even looking. But if Hurley was looking for a little motivation at the start of the season, he probably could have found it here, where the supposed #1 team in the country earned a 77-69 win over a Michigan State team that won’t be champions of anything anytime soon.

In fact, given that Tom Izzo’s one and only national title will be a quarter century old when the Final Four returns this year, it may be time to find a new team for this annual event which, if we take the words literally, should feature teams that actually win championships.

Maybe, you know, like the team that has won five NCAA titles since Izzo’s crowning 25 years ago.

Seriously, why is Michigan State still invited to participate? If the theory behind the Champions Classic is to generate interest in college basketball by bringing four blue bloods together in the same building for an early-season ESPN showcase, you should put the best programs there.

Sorry, but Michigan State is no longer eligible.

For Izzo, who turns 70 in January, it’s been a decade of decline. Oh, he’s still so good when he gets grumpy about the culture around college athletics these days and can explain to reporters that things aren’t as good (for him, anyway) as they used to be .

But on the ground? Well, the Spartans don’t breathe that air anymore. This is still a hard-nosed, uncompromising team that guards and plays physical and spoils things a bit for more talented opponents.

They’re just a smaller version of that now, led by Frankie Fidler, a transfer from Omaha, and Jaxon Kohler, a junior who averaged 2.0 points per game last season.

And when you faced that against Kansas? Well, it wasn’t much to watch if we’re honest.

“Offensively, we both sucked,” Izzo said.

Give Izzo credit for keeping the game competitive into the second half, despite his team shooting 3 of 24 from the three-point line and shooting 35 percent overall.

But this isn’t the “Lose Close and Make It Ugly Classic.” It’s supposed to be for the elite of the elite. The only thing Michigan State was elite at Tuesday was making 18,000 pairs of eyes bleed.

“You have to play games like this, especially against teams like Michigan State,” Kansas guard Dajuan Harris Jr. said.

Talk about damning with faint praise. And it was completely predictable. That’s what Michigan State is in the current decade: underqualified, uninspiring and more likely to sweat in the NCAA Tournament bubble than cut down the nets. There’s nothing wrong with that. There are dozens of college basketball teams that play like Michigan State, look like Michigan State, and some will advance deep into the NCAA tournament next March. For all we know, these Spartans could be one of them.

But that’s not the point.

In 2011, when then-Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis helped pitch this event to ESPN, it made sense to share that stage with Kentucky, Duke and Kansas. Izzo sent teams to the Final Four every few years, and at a minimum the Spartans entered each season somewhere in the top 10.

But Tuesday was the third time in the last four years that Michigan State has entered the Champions Classic unranked, and last season they were No. 18. When you compare that to the star quality that other programs bring to this event — and that a team like UConn could provide — how does it make sense that the Spartans are still here?

For most of this event’s history, Michigan State has earned its spot through consistency, if not championships. But now it’s indisputable that the Spartans are a cut below, grandfathered in by reputation rather than results.

Is it the Champions Classic or the “Three Champions and Middle of the Big Ten Classic”?

Izzo is the type of coach who believes you earn what you get. If the state of Michigan cannot meet these standards, we do not need to continue to let them turn this event into a misnomer.

This article was originally published on USA TODAY: Champions Classic for basketball elites. Why is Michigan State here?